Claire's review

Paulo Coelho is one of my favorite writers, and this is the book where he hooked me for good.

The book tells the story of the cynical, urban working girl Pilar, who runs into her childhood best friend after many years and discovers a couple of pretty astonishing things, all right in a row: A) that he's been in love with her all his life, B) that he's entered the seminary, C) that he belongs to a strange spiritual cult dedicated to worshiping the feminine face of God, and D) that he can perform miracles. Pilar's freakouts to all these pieces of information are comfortingly human and understandable. But when her friend (who is never named) talks her into joining him on a road trip through Spain and France, the characters they meet, the sights they see, and the lessons Pilar learns help her to let her guard down, fall in love, and find her way back to the faith of her childhood.

There's a scene where Pilar and her friend are eating dinner and she tries to get him to knock his glass off the table, just to see if he'll do it. It's hard to explain, you kind of have to read it, but that scene is just amazing. I also love the opening chapter, where Pilar is sitting by the banks of the river Piedra lamenting how she screwed things up and lost the love of her life, and the very last line of the book ("'Go and get your things,' he said. 'Dreams mean work.'").

I have to say, Coelho can get a tiny bit didactic--in everything really, not just this book. "The Zahir" and "The Alchemist" suffer from a similar problem. But really, that's nothing compared to the stunning writing in the rest of the book. It's a beautiful read. ...less...more